North America

Subterms

    More stories

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in World Politics

      Language Paranoia and the Binary Exclusion Syndrome

      by

      In the olden days, which some of us remember as the 20th century, news stories and commentary tended to focus on people and their actions. The news would sometimes highlight and even debate current ideas circulating about society and politics. New stories quite often sought to weigh the arguments surrounding serious projects intended to improve things. The general tendency was to prefer substance over form.

      Things have radically changed since the turn of the century. It may be related to a growing sentiment of fatalism that defines our Zeitgeist. Outside of the billionaire class, people feel powerless, a feeling that is already wreaking havoc in the world of politics. After banks that were “too big to fail,” we have inherited problems that appear too big to solve. Climate change and COVID-19 have contributed powerfully to the trend, but a series of chaotic elections in several of our most stable democracies, accompanied by newer wars or prospects of war called upon to replace the old ones all serve to comfort the trend.

      Language and the News

      READ MORE

      In the United States, this feeling of helplessness has had the unfortunate effect of turning people’s attention away from the issues and the facts that matter to focus on the language individuals use to describe them. Words that inspire aggressive emotional reactions now dominate the news cycle, eclipsing the people, events and ideas that should be at the core of the news cycle.

      One reason we have launched Fair Observer’s new feature, Language and the News, and are continuing with a weekly dictionary of what was formerly The Daily Devil’s Dictionary is that, increasingly, the meaning of the words people use has been obscured and replaced by the emotions different groups of combative people attach to words.

      What explains this drift into a state of permanent combat over words? Addressing the issues — any issues — apparently demands too much effort, too much wrestling with nuance and perspective. It is much easier to reduce complex political and moral problems to a single word and load that word with an emotional charge that disperses even the possibility of nuance. This was already the case when political correctness emerged decades ago. But the binary logic that underlies such oppositional thinking has now taken root in the culture and goes well beyond the simple identification of words to use or not use in polite society.

      The Problem of Celebrities Who Say Things Out Loud

      Last week, US podcast host Joe Rogan and actress Whoopi Goldberg submitted to concerted public ostracism (now graced with the trendy word “canceled”) over the words and thoughts they happened to express in contexts that used to be perceived as informal, exploratory conversations. Neither was attempting to make a formal pronouncement about the state of the world. They were guilty of thinking out loud, sharing thoughts that emerged spontaneously.

      It wasn’t James Joyce (who was at one time canceled by the courts), but it was still a stream of consciousness. Human beings have been interacting in that way ever since the dawn of language, at least 50,000 years. The exchange of random and sometimes focused thoughts about the world has been an essential part of building and regulating every human institution we know, from family life to nation-states.

      Embed from Getty Images

      During these centuries of exchanges, many of the thoughts uttered were poorly or only partially reasoned. Dialogue with others helped them to evolve and become the constructs of culture. Some were mistaken and bad. Others permitted moments of self-enlightenment. Only popes have ever had the privilege of making ex cathedra pronouncement deemed infallible, at least to the faithful. The rest of us have the messy obligation of debating among ourselves what we want to understand as the truth.

      Dialogue never establishes the truth. It permits us to approach it. That doesn’t preclude the fact that multiple groups have acquired the habit of thinking themselves endowed with papal certainty allowing them to close the debate before it even begins. Everyone has noticed the severe loss of trust in the institutions once counted upon to guide the mass of humanity: governments, churches and the media.

      That general loss of trust means that many groups with like-minded tastes, interests or factors of identity have been tempted to impose on the rest of society the levels of certainty they feel they have attained. Paradoxically, internationally established churches, once dominant across vast swaths of the globe, have come to adopt an attitude of humble dialogue just as governments, the media and various interest groups have become ensconced in promulgating the certainty of their truth while displaying an intolerance of dialogue.

      Dialogue permits us to refine our perceptions, insights and intuitions and put them into some kind of perspective. That perspective is always likely to shift as new insights (good) and social pressures (not always so good) emerge. The sane attitude consists of accepting that no linguistically formulated belief — even the idea that the sun rises in the east — should be deemed to be a statement of absolute truth. (After all, despite everyone’s daily experience, the sun doesn’t rise — the Earth turns.) Perspective implies that, however stable any of our ideas may appear to us at a particular time, we can never be absolutely sure they are right and even less sure that the words we have chosen to frame such truths sum up their meaning.

      Truth and the US State Department

      A quick glance at the media over the past week demonstrates the complexity of the problem. Theoretically, a democratic society will always encourage dialogue, since voting itself, though highly imperfect, is presented as a means for the people to express their intentions concerning real world issues. In a democracy, a plurality of perspectives is not only desirable, but inevitable and should be viewed as an asset. But those who are convinced of their truth and have the power to impose their truth see it as a liability.

      On February 3, State Department spokesman Ned Price spent nearly four minutes trying to affirm, in response to a journalist’s persistent objections, that his announced warning about a Russian false flag operation wasn’t, as the journalist suspected, itself a false flag. The journalist, Matt Lee of the Associated Press, asked for the slightest glimpse of the substance of the operation before accepting to report that there actually was something to report on. What he got were words.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Price, a former CIA officer, believed that the term was self-explanatory. He clearly expected members of the press to be grateful for receiving “information that is present in the US government.” Price sees Lee’s doubt as a case of a reporter seeking “solace in information that the Russians are putting out.” In other words, either a traitor or a useful idiot. Maggie Haberman of The New York Times reacted by tweeting, “ This is really something as an answer. Questioning the US government does not = supporting what Russia is saying.”

      Haberman is right, though she might want to instruct some of her fellow journalists at The Times, who have acquired the habit of unquestioningly echoing anything the State Department, the Defense Department or the intelligence community shares with them. Especially when for more than five years, The Times’ specialized in promoting alarmism about Russia’s agency in the “Havana syndrome” saga. Because the CIA suspected, all the cases were the result of “hostile acts.” Acts, by the way, for which the only physically identified perpetrator was a species of Cuban crickets.

      The back and forth concerning Russia’s false flag operation, like the Havana syndrome itself, illustrates a deeper trend that has seriously eroded the quality of basic communication in the United States. It takes the form of an increasingly binary, even Manichean type of reasoning. For Price, it’s the certainty of the existence of evil acts by Russians before needing any proof and even before those acts take place. But it also appears in the war of obstinate aggression waged by those who seek to silence anyone who suggests that the government’s vaccine mandates and other COVID-19 restrictions may not be justified.

      This binary syndrome now permeates all levels of US culture, and not only the political sphere. The constraining force of the law is one thing, which people can accept. The refusal of dialogue is literally anti-human, especially in a democracy. But it also takes the form of moral rage when someone expresses an idea calling into question some aspect of authority or, worse, pronounces a word whose sound alone provokes a violent reaction. There is a residual vigilante culture that still infects US individualism. The willingness, or rather the need people feel, to apply summary justice helps to explain the horrendous homicide rate in the United States. Vigilantism has gradually contaminated the world of politics, entertainment and even education, where parents and school boards go to battle over words and ideas.

      George W. Bush’s contribution

      US culture has always privileged binary oppositions and shied away from nuance because nuance is seen as an obstacle to efficiency in a world where “time is money.” But a major shift began to take place at the outset of the 21st century that seriously amplified the phenomenon. The 1990s were a decade in which Americans believed their liberal values had triumphed globally following the collapse of the Soviet Union. For many people, it turned out to be boring. The spice of having an enemy was missing.

      In 2001, the Manichean thinking that dominated the Cold War period was thus programmed for a remake. Although the American people tend to prefer both comfort and variety (at least tolerance of variety in their lifestyles), politicians find it useful to identify with an abstract mission consisting of defending the incontestable good against the threat posed by inveterate evil. The updated Cold War was inaugurated by George W. Bush in September 2001 when the US president famously proclaimed, “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make: either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      The cultural attitude underlying this statement is now applied to multiple contexts, not just military ones. I like to call it the standard American binary exclusionist worldview. It starts from the conviction that one belongs to a camp and that camp represents either what is right or a group that has been unjustly wronged. Other camps may exist. Some may even be well-intentioned. But they are all guilty of entertaining false beliefs, like Price’s characterization of journalists who he imagines promote Russian talking points. That has long been standard fare in politics, but the same pattern applies in conflicts concerning what are called “culture issues,” from abortion to gender issues, religion or teaching Critical Race Theory.

      In the political realm, the exclusionist worldview describes the dark side of what many people like to celebrate as “American exceptionalism,” the famous “shining city on a hill.” The idea it promotes supposes that others — those who don’t agree, accept and obey the stated rules and principles — are allied with evil, either because they haven’t yet understood the force of truth, justice and democracy and the American way, or because they have committed to undermining it. That is why Bush claimed they had “a decision to make.” Ned Price seems to be saying something similar to Matt Lee.

      A General Cultural Phenomenon

      But the exclusionist mentality is not just political. It now plays out in less straightforward ways across the entire culture. Nuance is suspected of being a form of either cowardice or hypocrisy. Whatever the question, debate will be cut short by one side or the other because they have taken the position that, if you are not for what I say, you are against it. This is dangerous, especially in a democracy. It implies an assumption of moral authority that is increasingly perceived by others to be unfounded, whether it is expressed by government officials or random interest groups.

      The example of Price’s false flag and Lee’s request for substance — at least something to debate — reveals how risky the exclusionist mentality can be. Anyone familiar with the way intelligence has worked over the past century knows that false flags are a very real item in any intelligence network’s toolbox. The CIA’s Operation Northwoods spelled out clearly what the agency intended to carry out. “We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba,” a Pentagon official wrote, adding that “casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.”

      There is strong evidence that the 2001 anthrax attacks in the US, designed to incriminate Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and justify a war in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, was an attempted false flag operation that failed miserably when it was quickly discovered that the strain of anthrax could only have been produced in America. Lacking this proof, which also would have had the merit of linking Hussein to the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration had to struggle for another 18 months to build (i.e., fabricate) the evidence of Iraq’s (non-existent) weapons of mass destruction.

      Embed from Getty Images

      This enabled the operation “shock and awe” that brought down Hussein’s regime in 2003. It took the FBI nearly seven years to complete the coverup of the anthrax attacks designed to be attributed to Iraq. They did so by pushing the scientist Bruce Ivins to commit suicide and bury any evidence that may have elucidated a false flag operation that, by the way, killed five Americans.

      But false flags have become a kind of sick joke. In a 2018 article on false flags, Vox invokes the conventional take that false flag reports tend to be the elements of the tawdry conspiracy theories that have made it possible for people like Alex Jones to earn a living.  “So ‘false flag’ attacks have happened,” Vox admits, “but not often. In the world of conspiracy theorists, though, ‘false flags’ are seemingly everywhere.” If this is true, Lee would have been on the right track if he were to suspect the intelligence community and the State Department of fabricating a conspiracy theory.

      Although democracy is theoretically open to a diversity of competing viewpoints, the trend in the political realm has always pointed toward a binary contrast rather than the development of multiple perspectives. The founding fathers of the republic warned against parties, which they called factions. But it didn’t take long to realize that the growing cultural diversity of the young nation, already divided into states that were theoretically autonomous, risked creating a hopelessly fragmented political system. The nation needed to construct some standard ideological poles to attract and crystallize the population’s political energies. In the course of the 19th century, a two-party system emerged, following the pattern of the Whigs and Tories in England, something the founders initially hoped to avoid.

      It took some time for the two political parties to settle into a stable binary system with the labels: Democrat and Republican. Their names reflected the two pillars of the nation’s founding ideology. Everyone accepted the idea that the United States was a democratic republic, if only because it wasn’t a monarchy. It was democratic because people could vote on who would represent them.

      It took nearly 200 years to realize that because the two fundamental ideas that constituted an ideology had become monopolized by two parties, there was no room for a third, fourth or fifth party to challenge them. The two parties owned the playing field. At some point in the late 20th century, the parties became competitors only in name. They morphed into an ideological duopoly that had little to do with the idea of being either a democracy or a republic. As James Carville insisted in his advice to candidate Bill Clinton in the 1992 presidential campaign, “It’s the economy, stupid.” He was right. As it had evolved, the political system represented the economy and no longer the people.

      Nevertheless, the culture created by a two-century-long rivalry contributed mightily to the triumph of the binary exclusionist worldview. In the 20th century, the standard distinction between Democrats and Republicans turned around the belief that the former believed in an active, interventionist government stimulating collective behavior on behalf of the people, and the latter in a minimalist barebones government committed to reinforcing private enterprise and protecting individualism.

      Where, as a duopoly, the two parties ended up agreeing is that interventionism was good when directed elsewhere, in the form of a military presence across the globe intended to demonstrate aggressive potential. Not because either party believed in the domination of foreign lands, but because they realized that the defense industry was the one thing that Republicans could accept as a legitimate highly constraining collective, national enterprise and that the Democrats, following Carville’s dictum, realized underpinned a thriving economy in which ordinary people could find employment.

      The Crimes of Joe Rogan and Whoopi Goldberg

      Politics, therefore, set in place a more general phenomenon: the binary exclusionist worldview that would soon spread to the rest of the culture. Exclusionism is a common way of thinking about what people consider to be issues that matter. It has fueled the deep animosity between opposing sides around the so-called cultural issues that, in reality, have nothing to do with culture but increasingly dominate the news cycle.

      Until the launch of the culture wars around issues such as abortion, gay marriage, identity and gender, many Americans had felt comfortable as members of two distinct camps. As Democrats and Republicans, they functioned like two rival teams in sport. Presidential elections were always Super Bowls of a sort at which the people would come for the spectacle. The purpose of the politicians that composed the parties was not to govern, but to win elections. But, for most of the 20th century, the acrimony they felt and generated focused on issues of public policy, which once implemented the people would accept, albeit grudgingly if the other party was victorious. After the storm, the calm. In contrast, cultural issues generate bitterness, resentment and ultimately enmity. After the storm, the tempest.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The force of the raging cultural winds became apparent last week in two entirely different celebrity incidents, concerning Joe Rogan and Whoopi Goldberg. Both were treated to the new style of excommunication that the various churches of correct thinking and exclusionary practices now mete out on a regular basis. In an oddly symmetrical twist, the incriminating words were what is now referred to as “the N-word” spoken by a white person and the word “race” spoken by a black person. Later in the week, a debate arose about yet another word with racial implications — apartheid — when Amnesty International formally accused the state of Israel of practicing it against Palestinians.

      The N-word has become the locus classicus of isolating an item of language that — while muddled historically and linguistically — is so definitively framed that, even while trying to come to grips with it informally as an admittedly strange and fascinating phenomenon in US culture, any white person who utters the reprehensible term will be considered as having delivered a direct insult to a real person or an entire population. Years ago, Joe Rogan made a very real mistake that he now publicly regrets. While examining the intricate rules surrounding the word and its interdiction, he allowed himself the freedom to actually pronounce the word.

      In his apology, Rogan claimed that he hasn’t said the word in years, which in itself is an interesting historical point. He recognizes that the social space for even talking about the word has become exaggeratedly restricted. Branding Rogan as a racist just on that basis may represent a legitimate suspicion about the man’s character, worth examining, but it is simply an erroneous procedure. Using random examples from nearly 10 years ago may raise some questions about the man’s culture, but it makes no valid case for proving Rogan is or even was at the time a racist.

      The Whoopi Goldberg case is less straightforward because it wasn’t about a word but an idea. She said the Holocaust “was not about race.” Proposing the hypothesis that Nazi persecution of Jews may be a case of something other than simple racism is the kind of thought any legitimate historian might entertain and seek to examine. It raises some serious questions not only about what motivated the Nazis, but about what our civilization means by the words “race” and “racism.” There is considerable ambiguity to deal with in such a discussion, but any statement seeking to clarify the nature of what is recognized as evil behavior should be seen as potentially constructive.

      Once some kind of perspective can be established about the terms and formulations that legitimately apply to the historical case, it could be possible to conclude, as many think, that either Goldberg’s particular formulation is legitimate, inaccurate or inappropriate. Clearly, Goldberg’s critics found her formulation inappropriate, but, objectively speaking, they were in no position to prove it inaccurate without engaging in the meaning of “race.”

      The problem is complex because history is complex, both the history of the time and the historical moment today. One of the factors of complexity appeared in another controversy created by Amnesty International’s publication of a study that accuses Israel of being an apartheid state, which considered in international law is to be a crime against humanity.

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      Interestingly, The Times of Israel gives a fair and very complete hearing to Amnesty International’s spokespersons, whereas American media largely ignored the report. When they did cover it, US media focused on the dismissive Israeli reaction. PBS News Hour quoted Ned Price, who in another exchange with Matt Lee stated that the department rejects “the view that Israel‘s actions constitute apartheid.”

      Once again, the debate is over a word, the difference in this case being that the word is specifically defined in international law. The debate predictably sparked, among some commentators, another word, whose definition has often been stretched in extreme directions in the interest of provoking strong emotions: anti-Semitism. Goldberg’s incriminating sentence itself was branded by some as anti-Semitism.

      At the end of the day, the words used in any language can be understood in a variety of ways. Within a culture that has adopted the worldview of binary exclusionism, the recourse to constructive dialogue is rapidly disappearing. Instead, we are all saddled with the task of trying to memorize the lists of words one can and cannot say and the ideas it will be dangerous to express.

      What this means is that addressing and solving real problems is likely to become more and more difficult. It also means that the media will become increasingly less trustworthy than it already is today. For one person, a “false flag” corresponds to a fact, and for another, it can only be the component of a conspiracy theory. The N-word is a sound white people must never utter, even if reading Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn aloud. And the word “race” — a concept that has no biological reality — now may apply to any group of people who have been oppressed by another group and who choose to be thought of as a race.

      The topics these words refer to are all serious. For differing reasons, they are all uncomfortable to talk about. But so are issues spawned by the COVID-19 pandemic, related to health and prevention, especially when death and oppressive administrative constraints happen to be involved. The real problem is that as soon as the dialogue begins to stumble over a specific word or ill-defined concept or the feeling of injustice, reasoning is no longer possible. Obedient acceptance of what becomes imposed itself as the “norm” is the only possible survival strategy, especially for anyone visible to the public. But that kind of obedience may not be the best way to practice democracy.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    • 75 Shares169 Views

      in World Politics

      The Art of Prince Andrew’s Lawyers

      by

      With everything that has been going on as the world seeks to weigh the chances of a nuclear war and a realignment of nations across the globe, fans of the media may have failed to tune into the real news that broke in recent weeks. Forget Ukraine, there is another drama whose suspense is building. It obviously concerns the fate of the battered Prince Andrew because of his role in the Jeffrey Epstein/Ghislaine Maxwell saga that has already produced an officially (and conveniently) declared “suicide” (Epstein’s) and a celebrity criminal trial (Maxwell’s). 

      Since a US judge has now agreed to bring Virginia Giuffre’s civil lawsuit to trial, it means that for the first time, a prince of England, a member of the royal family, will be officially put on the hot seat in an American courtroom. The rebelling colonists couldn’t get King George III to answer for his crimes, but they now appear to have a son of Elizabeth II in their grasp.

      Boris Johnson’s Convenient Bravado

      READ MORE

      For weeks, the media have been running updates specifically on speculation about the legal strategy Andrew’s attorneys are likely to adopt. Though for the moment it remains mere speculation, it does have the power for attentive observers to provoke a few comic effects. The latest hypothesis has the lawyers seeking to turn the tables on Giuffre by accusing her of sex trafficking. They aren’t claiming Andrew is innocent, but they want her to appear guilty. Business Insider considers that ploy “risky” because the tactic consists of getting a witness — another of Epstein’s victims — to make that claim about Giuffre. It risks backfiring because the witness could actually contradict Andrew’s adamant claim that he never had sex with Giuffre.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Actually, the legal team appears already to have prepared a strategy for that eventuality. On January 26, NPR reported that Andrew’s lawyers addressed a message to the court saying, “that if any sexual activity did occur between the prince and Virginia Giuffre, it was consensual.” This may sound odd because the accused’s lawyers should know if he did or didn’t, but the law is never about knowledge, only the impression a good attorney can make on a judge or a jury.

      NPR continues its description of the lawyers’ position: “The court filing made clear that Andrew wasn’t admitting sexual contact with Giuffre. But it said if the case wasn’t dismissed, the defense wants a trial in which it would argue that her abuse claims ‘are barred by the doctrine of consent.’”

      Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Consent:

      Agreement on something perceived as illicit between two or more people, including, in some extreme cases, a member of the British royal family and a 17-year-old American girl turned into a sex slave by the royal’s best American friend

      Contextual Note

      Since lawyers live in a world of hypotheticals, evoking the idea that “if” a judge and jury were to decide sexual contact between the two was real, it should enable the legal team to make a claim they expect the court to understand as: She was asking for it. In civil cases, all lawyers know that attack is the best defense.

      Thus, Andrew’s legal team is now being paid, not to prove the prince’s innocence, but to establish the guilt of the victim. They are seeking to create the impression that the Virginia Roberts of two decades ago was already a wolf in sheep’s clothing when she consented to consorting with a prince. And, of course, continues to be one as she seeks to profit from the civil trial today.

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      Most commentators doubt that Andrew has a case. This has permitted the media to revel in the humiliation of a man who has always been perceived as supercilious and deserving of no one’s attention apart from being the queen’s “favourite son.” That is why this has been nothing but bad news for Buckingham Palace. 

      And it looks to get worse. So stay tuned.

      Historical Note

      Legal experts tell us that what the prince’s lawyers refer to as the “doctrine of consent” is officially described as the “doctrine of informed consent.” More pertinently, the consent referred to focuses entirely on cases in the realm of medical treatment. It is all about a patient’s agreement to a medical procedure that may be risky. It defines the physician’s duty to inform the patient of all the risks associated with a recommended procedure. If consent is obtained, the physician will be clear of responsibility should any of the risks be realized.

      It may seem odd that Prince Andrew’s lawyers are appealing to a doctrine established specifically for medical practice. But while many will not think of lawyers themselves as appealing, whenever they lose a case, you can be sure that they will be appealing it. But that isn’t the only kind of appealing they do. When preparing a case, they will appeal to any random principle or odd fact that appears to serve their purpose. This should surprise no one because, just like politicians who focus on winning elections rather than governing, lawyers focus on winning cases for their clients rather than on justice.

      The sad truth, however, for those who believe that justice is a fine thing to have as a feature of an advanced civilization is that the lawyers are not only right to follow that logic; the best of their lot are also very skillful in making it work. Which is why what we call the justice system will always be more “just” for those who can afford to pay for the most skillful lawyers.

      The final irony of this story lies in the fact that, in their diligence, the lawyers have borrowed the idea behind the doctrine of consent, not from the world of sexual predation, but from the realm of therapy and medical practice. They need to be careful at this point. Even Andrew and his lawyers should know that if you insert a space in the word “therapist,” it points to the image Prince Andrew has in some people’s minds: “the rapist.” The mountains of testimony from Jeffrey Epstein’s countless victims reveal that, though they were undoubtedly consenting in some sense to the masterful manipulation of the deceased billionaire and friend to the famous and wealthy (as well as possibly a spy), all of them have been to some degree traumatized for life by the experience.

      Embed from Getty Images

      As Bill Gates explained when questioned about the problem of his own (he claims ill-informed) consent to whatever he was up to with Epstein, for him there could be no serious regrets. The problem no longer exists because, well, “he’s dead” (referring to his pal, Jeffrey). Prince Andrew is still alive, though this whole business has deprived him of all his royal privileges, making him something of a dead branch on the royal family tree. Virginia Giuffre is also still alive, though undoubtedly disturbed by her experience as a tool in the hands of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and Prince Andrew.

      So, unless a nuclear war intervenes in the coming weeks between the US and Russia making everything else redundant (including the collapse of Meta’s stock), the interesting news will turn around the legal fate in the US of two prominent Brits. The first is a socialite (and possibly also a spy) as well as a high-profile heiress, Ghislaine Maxwell. She is expected to have a retrial sometime in the future. The second is none other than the queen’s favorite son.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    • 88 Shares189 Views

      in World Politics

      What Would Helsinki 2.0 Look Like Today?

      by

      The European security order has broken down. You might think that’s an overstatement. NATO is alive and well. The Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) in Europe is still functioning at a high level.

      Of course, there’s the possibility of a major war breaking out between Russia and Ukraine. But would Russian President Vladimir Putin really take such an enormous risk? Moreover, periodic conflicts in that part of the world — in Ukraine since 2014, in Georgia in 2008, in Transnistria between 1990 and 1992 — have not escalated into Europe-wide wars. Even the horrific bloodletting of Yugoslavia in the 1990s was largely contained within the borders of that benighted former country, and many of the Yugoslav successor states have joined both the European Union and NATO.

      In Ukraine, More Than European Peace Is at Stake

      READ MORE

      So, you might argue, the European security order is in fine shape, and it’s only Putin who’s the problem. The United States and Europe will show their resolve in the face of the Russian troops that have massed at the border with Ukraine, Putin will accept some face-saving diplomatic compromise and the status quo will be restored.

      Even if that were to happen and war is averted this time, Europe is still in a fundamental state of insecurity. The Ukraine conflict is a symptom of this much deeper problem.

      The current European security order is an overlay of three different institutional arrangements. NATO is the surprisingly healthy dinosaur of the Cold War era with 30 members, a budget of $3 billion and collective military spending of over a trillion dollars.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Russia has pulled together a post-Cold War military alliance of former Soviet states, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), that is anemic by comparison with a membership that includes only Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Instead of expanding, the CSTO is shrinking, having lost Azerbaijan, Georgia and Uzbekistan over the course of its existence.

      And then there’s the Helsinki framework that holds East and West together in the tenuous OSCE. Neither Russia nor its military alliance was able to prevent the march of NATO eastward to include former Soviet republics. Neither NATO nor the OSCE was able to stop Russia from seizing Crimea, supporting a separatist movement in eastern Ukraine or orchestrating “frozen conflicts” in Georgia and Moldova.

      Presently, there are no arms control negotiations between East and West. China became Russia’s leading trade partner about a decade ago, and the United States and European countries have only fallen further behind since. Human rights and civil liberties are under threat in both the former Soviet Union and parts of the European Union.

      So, now do you understand what I mean by the breakdown of the European security order? The Cold War is back, and it threatens once again to go hot, if not tomorrow then perhaps sometime soon.

      So, yes, Ukrainian sovereignty must be defended in the face of potential Russian aggression. But the problem is much bigger. If we don’t address this bigger problem, then we’ll never really safeguard Ukraine, deal with Russia’s underlying concerns of encirclement or tackle the worrying militarization of Europe. What we need is Helsinki 2.0.

      The Origins of Helsinki 1.0

      In the summer of 1985, I was in Helsinki after a stint in Moscow studying Russian. I was walking down one of the streets in the Finnish capital when I came across a number of protesters holding signs.

      “Betrayal!” said one of them. “Appeasement!” said another. Other signs depicted a Russian bear pressing its claws into the then-Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      I’d happened on this band of mostly elderly protesters outside a building where dignitaries from around the world had gathered to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Helsinki Accords. At the time, I had only a vague understanding of the agreement, knowing only that it was a foundational text for East-West détente, an attempt to bridge the Iron Curtain.

      As I found out that day, not everyone was enthusiastic about the Helsinki Accords. The pact, signed in 1975 by the United States, Canada, the Soviet Union and all European countries except Albania, finally confirmed the post-war borders of Europe and the Soviet Union, which meant acknowledging that the Baltic states were not independent but instead under the Kremlin’s control. To legitimize its control over the Baltics in particular, a concession it had been trying to win for years, the Soviet Union was even willing to enter into an agreement mandating that it “respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief, for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion.”

      At the time, many human rights advocates were skeptical that the Soviet Union or its Eastern European satellites would do anything of the sort. After 1975, “Helsinki” groups popped up throughout the region — the Moscow Helsinki Group, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia — and promptly discovered that the Communist governments had no intention of honoring their Helsinki commitments, at least as they pertained to human rights.

      Most analysts back then saw the recognition of borders as cold realpolitik and the human rights language as impossibly idealistic. History has proved otherwise. The borders of the Soviet Union had an expiration date of 15 years. And, ultimately, it would be human rights — rather than war or economic sanctions — that spelled the end of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. Change came in the late 1980s from ordinary people who exercised the freedom of thought enshrined in the Helsinki Accords to protest in the streets of Vilnius, Warsaw, Prague and Tirana. The decisions made in 1975 ensured that the transitions of 1989-91 would be largely peaceful.

      After the end of the Cold War, the Helsinki Accords became institutionalized in the OSCE, and briefly, that promised to be the future of European security. After all, the collapse of the Soviet Union meant that NATO no longer had a reason for existence.

      Embed from Getty Images

      But institutions do not die easily. NATO devised new missions for itself, becoming involved in out-of-area operations in the Middle East, intervening in the Yugoslav wars and beginning in 1999 expanding eastward. The first Eastern European countries to join were the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, which technically brought the alliance to Russia’s very doorstep (since Poland borders the Russian territory of Kaliningrad). NATO expansion was precisely the wrong answer to the question of European security — my first contribution to Foreign Policy in Focus back in 1996 was a critique of expansion — but logic took a backseat to appetite.

      The OSCE, meanwhile, labored in the shadows. With its emphasis on non-military conflict resolution, it was ideally suited to the necessities of post-Cold War Europe. But it was an unwieldy organization, and the United States preferred the hegemonic power it wielded through NATO.

      This brings us to the current impasse. The OSCE has been at the forefront of negotiating an end to the war in eastern Ukraine and maintains a special monitoring mission to assess the ceasefire there. But NATO is mobilizing for war with Russia over Ukraine, while Moscow and Washington remain as far apart today as they were during the Cold War.

      The Helsinki Accords were the way to bridge the unbridgeable in 1975. What would Helsinki 2.0 look like today?

      Toward Helsinki 2.0

      The Helsinki Accords were built around a difficult compromise involving a trade-off on borders and human rights. A new Helsinki agreement needs a similar compromise. That compromise must be around the most important existential security threat facing Europe and indeed the world: climate change.

      As I argue in a new article in Newsweek, “In exchange for the West acknowledging Russian security concerns around its borders, Moscow could agree to engage with its OSCE partners on a new program to reduce carbon emissions and transition from fossil fuels. Helsinki 2.0 must be about cooperation, not just managing disagreements.”

      The Russian position on climate change is “evolving,” as politicians like to say. After years of ignoring the climate crisis — or simply seeing it as a good opportunity to access resources in the melting Arctic — the Putin administration change its tune last year, pledging to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.

      Embed from Getty Images

      There’s obviously room for improvement in Russia’s climate policy — as there is in the United States and Europe. But that’s where Helsinki 2.0 can make a major contribution. The members of a newly energized OSCE can engage in technical cooperation on decarbonization, monitor country commitments to cut emissions, and apply new and stringent targets on a sector that has largely gotten a pass: the military. It can even push for the most effective decarbonization strategy around: demilitarization.

      What does Russia get out of the bargain? A version of what it got in 1975: reassurances around borders.

      Right now, everyone is focused on the question of NATO expansion as either an unnecessary irritant or a necessary provocation in American-Russian relations. That puts too much emphasis on NATO’s importance. In the long term, it’s necessary to reduce the centrality of NATO in European security calculations and to do so without bulking up all the militaries of European states and the EU. By all means, NATO should be going slow on admitting new members. More important, however, are negotiations as part of Helsinki 2.0 that reduce military exercises on both sides of Russia’s border, address both nuclear and conventional buildups, and accelerate efforts to resolve the “frozen conflicts” in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. Neither NATO nor the CSTO is suited to these tasks.

      As in 1975, not everyone will be satisfied with Helsinki 2.0. But that’s what makes a good agreement: a balanced mix of mutual satisfaction and dissatisfaction. More importantly, like its predecessor, Helsinki 2.0 offers civil society an opportunity to engage — through human rights groups, arms control advocates, and scientific and educational organizations. This might be the hardest pill for the Kremlin to swallow, given its hostile attitude toward civil society. But the prospect of securing its borders and marginalizing NATO might prove simply too irresistible for Vladimir Putin.

      The current European security order is broken. It can be fixed by war. Or it can be fixed by a new institutional commitment by all sides to negotiations within an updated framework. That’s the stark choice when the status quo cannot hold.

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in World Politics

      Dissecting the Ukraine Crisis (Language and the News – Updated Daily)

      by

      As we announced in January, by highlighting the everyday abuses of the language of public personalities and the media, Fair Observer’s new running feature prolongs the four-year-old tradition of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary (now reduced to a weekly format). We will frequently add new items to the month’s entries. Each item will cite an occurrence in the news and add a short reflection focusing on its intended and unintended meaning.

      We invite readers to join us and submit their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

      February 1: Multiple Audiences

      CNN reports that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is feeling some discomfort in the face of US President Joe Biden’s eagerness to create panic around the idea of a Russian threat. Zelensky himself describes Russia’s actions as “dangerous but ambiguous.”

      “Earlier in the day, another source from the US side said there is a recognition in the White House that Zelensky has ‘multiple audiences’ and is trying to balance them. ‘On the one hand, he wants assistance, but he has to assure his people he has the situation under control. That’s a tricky balance.’”

      Though the source cited only two of the audiences, there are certainly a few others that were not mentioned. It could be said that nearly every relatively powerless country has at least two audiences: its people and whatever hegemonic power has decided to support it. The United States is by far the most prolific hegemonic “audience” of countries across the globe, though some fear China may surreptitiously catch up. The idea of being an audience, of course, implies an attitude of listening attentively, usually through the hegemon’s diplomats but just as significantly, through its spies.

      Why Monitoring Language Is Important

      Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

      In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

      Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

      Fair Observer’s Language and the News feature seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    • 75 Shares179 Views

      in World Politics

      Is the Decline of Democracy Inevitable?

      by

      Perhaps the most critical immediate question facing the world in 2022 is whether the decline and eventual destruction of democracy are inevitable in the next decade. Thousands of words have been directed to this question over recent years, intensifying after the ascendency of Donald Trump to the presidency in the United States, the propagation of “the big lie” after his defeat in the 2020 election, and the subsequent insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

      Will the Pandemic Revitalize Ideas of the Global Common Good?

      READ MORE

      In the same period, Great Britain moved to the right under Prime Minister Boris Johnson while autocratic regimes in Poland, Hungary, Turkey, the Philippines and Brazil tightened their grip on governance structures.

      What does the future hold for liberal democracies around the world in the next decade? Are current trends an aberration, or is Marc Plattner prophetic in noting in “Democracy in Decline?” that authoritarianism seems to have the “wind at its back even if it has not yet spread to many more countries”?

      Inevitable Decline Scenario

      Current trends produce compelling evidence that seems to suggest that the decline of democracies is an inevitability. In the United States, daily columns appear pronouncing that democracy is in peril and under siege, and asking whether another civil war is possible. The January 6 assault on the Capitol continues to be a flashpoint in what was already a very volatile political environment. Voting restrictions targeted at likely Democratic voters have been instituted in many pro-Republican states. Given the prominence of America as a symbol of liberal democracy, countries around the world are now thinking the unthinkable about the future of democratic governance.

      Last year’s Freedom House report, “Freedom in the World for 2021,” carries the subheading “Democracy under Siege.” It suggests that the aggregate decline in freedom has exceeded gains for the past 15 years. While much of the deterioration in 2020 was associated with regimes in Africa and the Middle East, European nations — Poland, Hungary and Turkey — recorded reductions in freedom. Moreover, the United States has seen a 10-year decline in freedom equivalent to that experienced in 25 other nations.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Meanwhile, as the left-wing populist party headed by Nicolas Maduro has captured the headlines because of his dismantling of democratic institutions in Venezuela, right-wing populist movements are increasing across Latin America — Brazil, Bolivia and Peru are examples. More recently, following Jair Bolsonaro’s playbook in Brazil, the leader of the right-wing populist Christian Social Front in Chile, José Antonio Kast, forced a run-off in a recent election after voicing a desire to return to the autocratic regime of Augusto Pinochet.  

      Kast eventually lost in a landslide, which bodes well for the stability of democracy in Chile for the near future, but still raises the disconcerting issue of the popularity of authoritarianism among a sizeable minority of Chile’s polity. 

      Predisposition to Authoritarianism

      All of these recent events would seem to posit an argument that many citizens are susceptible to an authoritarian appeal. However, forecasting trends from recent events is always hazardous. Yet there is a more ominous source for predicting inevitability than the recent accounts and actions of political leaders and pundits. The writings of a number of social psychologists, historians and political scientists are extremely relevant to the question at hand.

      Karen Skinner argues in her book “The Authoritarian Dynamic” that autocratic tendencies are baked into the psychic of citizens of liberal democracies. Fear of change and diversity is easily transformed into a call by a politician for a return to the status quo of the past, like “Make American Great Again.” Long before the ascent of Trump, Skinner estimated that as many as one-third of the population in liberal democracies have a predisposition to authoritarianism.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Given that democracies encourage diversity, alternative interpretations of history and open dialogue on difficult issues, these strengths may exceed people’s capacity to tolerate difficult issues. A growing lack of tolerance toward immigrants, people of color or bureaucrats provides a platform for opportunistic leaders to activate that “authoritarian dynamic.”

      Roger Griffin offers a similar argument when he attributes modernity as a force for fascism. With the unfolding of modernity, populist interpretations of an idealized national past arise in response to the anxiety that citizens feel about a future where the only certainty is that it will be different than the past. Leaders with autocratic ambitions use “restorative nostalgia” — Svetlana Boym’s concept introduced in her book “The Future of Nostalgia” to describe a hereafter that replicates the past — to rally citizens to a populist political movement, a revolt against democratic institutions and their advocates, “the bureaucratic elites.”

      The arguments offered by Skinner, Griffin and others provide an important understanding of how the internal vulnerabilities of liberal democracies can nurture their own demise. However, despite the presence of an authoritarian dynamic within liberal democracies, a political leadership factor is part of the calculus for predicting the future of democracies. The past decade has witnessed the emergence of Plutarchian leaders who have learned to navigate the pathway that enables populist sentiments to be integrated with autocratic predispositions.

      While their hold on the masses is important, what is required to secure power is their ability to bewitch a small key group of capable and principled people in leadership roles and convince them to submit to the autocratic impulses of a prophetic leader as a means of achieving limited policy goals.  

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      A cadre of Von Papenites — those who have no autocratic predisposition but are willing to align with anti-democratic politics as a means of achieving specific policy goals or to ensure their own power base in the governance structure — is required. The important and notorious role that Franz von Papen had in enabling the rise of fascism in Germany in the 1930s must not be duplicated if democracy is to be resilient in countries experiencing populist movements. The dangerous combination of a charismatic populist leader and a sizable component of politicians willing to compromise their political ideals for transitory political goals would make the downward spiral of democracy inevitable.

      Yet in the United States, a contingent of politicians did defy the urges of the Trump administration to decertify the election results and preserve democratic rule. In Chile, citizens and political leaders rejected the call to return to the autocratic governance model of Pinochet’s dictatorship. In Europe, despite the political uncertainties created by the pandemic, right-wing populist movements have not established themselves as viable alternatives to current regimes. 

      Democracy will be resilient and survive the current wave of right-wing authoritarianism if leaders and institutions demonstrate their ability to solve critical social and economic problems, reverse the erosion of trust between themselves and the public, and put the safeguarding of democracy at the forefront of their political agenda.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    • 100 Shares189 Views

      in World Politics

      Fair Observer’s New Feature: “Language and the News”

      by

      After running the feature called “The Daily Devil’s Dictionary” for the past four years, Fair Observer is expanding its coverage of the culture of media and public discourse. The Devil’s Dictionary moves to a weekly format and will be accompanied by a developing reflection on the language of the news.

      Fact-checking Is Not Enough. Sense-checking Is Equally Important.

      One of the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic has been to highlight the awkward gap between what our institutions and media express in official language and people’s sense of reality. From our school days behind a desk to sitting down in front of the evening news after a hard day’s work, we have been conditioned to trust a class of people we call professionals who know things we don’t know. These professionals feed us not just what they present as facts, but also the message and especially the meaning that results from interpreting those facts. Once their job is done, the media in particular count on us to share the information we have received with family, friends, coworkers and acquaintances we happen to converse with. And all of us most of the time obey. That is what keeps our private conversations going.

      In recent times, certain anomalies and blatant contradictions in the news cycles have upset this pattern of behavior that formerly structured civilized life. We have experienced a series of major crises that end up dominating the news cycle, including financial meltdowns, climate change, pandemics, to say nothing of the damage resulting from mass surveillance and meaningless wars. The not always convincing reporting on these events has seriously disrupted the ability of information professionals in both the media and education to maintain the stable cultural order that once seemed so sure to so many people.

      Coming to Terms With the Game Being Played on the Russia-Ukraine Border

      READ MORE

      This has led to a well-documented serious loss of confidence in the authority of democratic governments and their institutions on a global scale. Yahoo Finance recently cited Edelman’s Trust Barometer for 2022 that describes a global trend. “Among the key findings of the report was the overall lower trust in world leaders and institutions around the world, with 67% of respondents saying they worry that journalists and reporters were ‘purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations.’ The figures were 66% and 63% for government and business leaders, respectively.” 

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      With few exceptions, the populations of nations across the globe have deemed the performance of their government leaders seeking to manage the now two-year-old pandemic unsatisfactory, if not worse. A much longer trend reveals that confidence in the media has never been more shaky. Many governments and media pundits have attempted to blame social media for this visible decline in trust. But that seems like a ruse or at best a distraction, encouraged by the very authorities in whom the public has been losing trust. Though the owners and promoters of social media platforms, motivated by profit, narcissism and especially rapidly expanding power, are by no means to be trusted, most ordinary people understand that social media itself is little more than an extended space of personal conversation. For that reason, some in the political world see it as a threat to the established order.

      Commercial media and political authorities have increasingly touted the idea that fact-checking will solve the problem of restoring trust in information providers. But that is naive. We have already seen that making decisions about what is true and false is a perilous undertaking, not only because the boundaries between the two is often fuzzy, but also because powerful interests will inevitably step in to impose their preferred distinctions. 

      Things become even more complex when we realize that truth is not simply a set of verifiable facts, but an understanding that can be built up of the complex relationships and patterns those facts combine to create. We try to make sense of the world, but the act of making sense should require its own quality control. Expecting those who “manage” the information to provide that control is as dangerous as it is naive.

      Is There an Answer? Can Sense-checking Exist?

      Fair Observer’s “Language and the News” launched at the beginning of this year will focus on the curious ways in which public personalities — those who have knowledge to impart — literally play with the range of meaning language permits. On the face of it, playing sounds entertaining. And indeed, the purveyors of news understand that. It is why so many people now count on the news for entertainment. It is also why so much of the news is indistinguishable from entertainment. It is a game, but it’s a game in which there are clearly winners and losers. One of those losers is not so much the facts themselves, which do of course get distorted, but our perception and understanding of the reality we live in.

      Only by looking at the variety of resonances produced by language does the true complexity of reality come into view. But something else, slightly more sinister also comes into view. It is the relentless effort engaged by those who are empowered to use language for our information and entertainment to reduce complexity to a simple idea that serves some practical or ideological end that they are attached to. Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky once described the processes in detail in their book, “Manufacturing Consent.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      At the end of the month of January 2022, Fair Observer launches its feature, “Language and the News.” It includes a “Weekly Devil’s Dictionary” but will also be composed of short vignettes that pick up salient examples from the current news cycle to highlight how they produce or obscure meaning. In the coming weeks, we will open the channel of communication for our readers to provide their own sense-checking. Think of it as a communication game. But it is the kind of game in which there should be no losers, since — at least theoretically — everyone in a democratic society profits from clarity. 

      Here are the first two examples to inaugurate the new feature.

      Example 1: Mitch McConnell’s America

      Newsweek reported Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell’s objections to the voting rights bill the Democrats proposed. With impeccable self-revelatory logic, he derided the need for reform or the fact that the current system in many places was built to reduce access to the polls for black Americans. “Well, the concern is misplaced,” he said. “Because if you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans.”

      Sigmund Freud maintained that verbal slips reveal deeper levels of psychical truth. What would he say about this? 

      Coming from the senator from Kentucky, one of the Confederate states during the Civil War, he would see a true continuity with the spirit and culture of the Old South. It is likely that at the nation’s founding, blacks who were in their vast majority slaves were not considered Americans. Even though each slave counted, for the needs of representation, as three-fifths of a “real” American, they could not vote. They were property. McConnell may feel that because the black community consistently votes at more than 90% for Democrats, they are the property of Democrats rather than “Americans.”

      Example 2: Joe Biden’s Extended Property

      In his extended press conference last week, US President Joe Biden offered his updated interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. “We used to talk about, when I was a kid in college, about “America’s backyard,” the president reminded the press. “It’s not America’s backyard. Everything south of the Mexican border is America’s front yard.”

      Everyone in the United States knows that your front yard is not only identified as your property, but more significantly it represents the image of yourself you wish to convey to the outside world. The traditional reference to a backyard contained the idea that it was a stretch of land that was far less significant, required less upkeep, if any at all, and could even merge with the countryside. Calling Latin America America’s backyard was disrespectful but suggested the possibility of benign negligence.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Biden most certainly believed his metaphor would convey a notion of respect and even solidarity with the people who inhabit the land in front of his house. But that is the crux of the problem. People who live in your front yard are squatters, not neighbors. The very idea that there may be people in a space the owner controls and designs to convey the family’s image is shocking. At least it should appear shocking to anyone who lives anywhere between El Paso and Tierra del Fuego.

      To avoid misunderstanding, though with no real intention to correct the terrifying image he created, Biden added: “And we’re equal people. We don’t dictate what happens in any other part of that — of this continent or the South American continent. We have to work very hard on it.”

      And so, between Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden, we learned that blacks are not quite the same thing as Americans and that Latinos and Latinas are at best thought of as tolerated squatters. The land of the free continues, at least unconsciously, to make distinctions between those who are authentically free and those who may, according to their ethnic or cultural identity, simply aspire to be free. 

      The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in World Politics

      Coming to Terms With the Game Being Played on the Russia-Ukraine Border

      by

      Over at least the past two months, US President Joe Biden’s White House has successfully inculcated in nearly all of the corporate media its firm belief that Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, has made the decision to mount a military invasion of Ukraine. Most of the articles published on the subject at best wonder about only two things. When will the invasion take place? And how far will it go?

      The Pentagon’s Latest Glorious Failure

      READ MORE

      Since the question of whether he will invade has been put aside, the pundits are asking themselves a different question. It concerns President Putin’s motives. Does Putin feel he needs to overthrow the Ukrainian government and reestablish a friendly regime that will serve as a buffer state between Russia and Europe? Or will he simply be content with controlling the Russian-speaking eastern parts of Ukraine, effectively destabilizing the current regime and thus preventing the possibility of the nation’s integration into NATO?

      Given the apparently Beltway mantra that an invasion is imminent and that the West insists on Ukraine’s right to do what it wants, including joining NATO, it was therefore surprising to read in The New York Times this week that people in the White House — in this case, people who usually are removed from communication with the media — may have made a different assessment. In an article whose title “War May Loom, but Are There Offramps?” is an acknowledgment of the level of uncertainty that surrounds the current geopolitical standoff, David E. Sanger reveals that “even President Biden’s top aides say they have no idea if a diplomatic solution, rather than the conquest of Ukraine, is what Mr. Putin has in mind.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Like most Russians, and unlike most Americans, Putin knows something about how the game of chess is played. Geopolitics for Russians has always been a game of chess. Curiously, Western commentators instead seem to believe that the game logic Putin respects is similar to that of American football or basketball. They incessantly talk about Russia’s “playbook.” These are sports where you assign roles, plan actions and then try to execute. However complex the configurations may come, plays in a playbook follow a logic of going from step one to step two. Chess requires a different form and level of thinking.

      It is reasonable to suppose that the Russian-American AP reporter Vladimir Isachenkov has a good understanding of Russian politics and Russian culture. Here is how he describes the current situation: “Amid fears of an imminent attack on Ukraine, Russia has further upped the ante by announcing more military drills in the region.

      Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Up the ante:

      A metaphor from poker that when used correctly means to increase the initial stakes of a game, the amount that must be advanced by each player to enter the game. It is often used incorrectly as an equivalent of another poker term: call the bluff.  

      Contextual Note

      Isachenkov predictably foresees the invasion authorities in the West almost seem to desire, and not only in Washington. This week, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson forecasted Putin’s “plan for a lightning war.” Translated into German, that means Blitzkrieg, a term Johnson preferred to avoid using, though the innuendo was clear. The point of the entire effort to predict a Russian invasion is to instill the idea that Vladimir Putin is Adolf Hitler.

      Russians, however, are not known for practicing Blitzkrieg. Chess players prefer to construct their game patiently through a series of maneuvers that look at a long-term evolution. They challenge their opponent’s understanding of an evolving situation and are extremely sensitive to the layout on the chessboard, with the intent of making a checkmate inevitable. Americans, in particular, tend to go for strikes and are always hoping for a lucky strike.

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      Perhaps because Isachenkov believes Americans may not understand such strategies, instead of looking to the subtlety of chess for his gaming metaphor or even to Putin’s documented experience of judo, he draws his literary inspiration from another quintessential American game, poker. He tells us Russia has “upped the ante.” In so doing, he misinterprets not only the meaning of Putin’s moves but even the practice of poker itself. Isachenkov appears to interpret “up the ante” as meaning “increase the pressure” or “raise the temperature.” He didn’t realize that poker offers a better metaphor for Putin’s actions: calling Biden’s bluff.

      No respectable Western commentator would frame the situation in those terms. It would mean acknowledging that the US resorts to the ignoble art of bluffing. Bluffing implies hypocrisy. The US has only one goal: to make the world more equitable and to help democracy prevail. Secretary of State Antony Blinken defined the mission in these terms: “It’s about the sovereignty and self-determination of Ukraine and all states,” before adding that “at its core, it’s about Russia’s rejection of a post-Cold War Europe that is whole, free, and at peace.” And, just to make things clear: “It’s about whether Ukraine has a right to be a democracy.”

      Isachenkov points out that Russia “has refused to rule out the possibility of military deployments to the Caribbean, and President Vladimir Putin has reached out to leaders opposed to the West.” He calls this “military muscle-flexing” but perhaps fails to see this for the theater it is meant to be, coming from the president of a nation that gave us Pushkin, Gogol, Chekhov and Gorki. Evoking the Caribbean is Putin’s way of alluding to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. It may especially be meant to call Americans’ attention to the idea that powerful nations do not look kindly to discovering an adverse military nuclear presence at its borders. If John F. Kennedy could force Nikita Khrushchev to back down 60 years ago, Putin should be allowed to do the same to Biden today.

      Historical Note

      If Vladimir Putin is calling Joe Biden’s bluff, what is the nature of that bluff? In the simplest terms, Biden’s bluff is the latest version of what President George H.W. Bush, after the demise of the Soviet Union, proudly called the “new world order.” After defeating Donald Trump, Biden announced to his allies in Europe that “America is back,” which was his way of saying “my version of America is great again,” the version that uses its military reach to protect its business interests across the globe.

      In a New York Times op-ed dated January 24, national security expert, Fiona Hill, who served under presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, claims that Putin’s aim is not just to annex all or part of Ukraine. He isn’t looking at taking a pawn or even a bishop. He has the whole chessboard in view. Hill is undoubtedly correct about Putin’s real purpose, that he “wants to evict the United States from Europe.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      “Right now,” Hill writes, “all signs indicate that Mr. Putin will lock the United States into an endless tactical game, take more chunks out of Ukraine and exploit all the frictions and fractures in NATO and the European Union.” In other words, the current posture of the United States is offering Putin a winning hand (poker) or setting itself up for a checkmate.

      Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who knows something about the stakes associated with warfare, makes a complementary point concerning the nature of the risk for the US: “It is another thing altogether to speak only of the pain sanctions would cause Russia, with little thought, if any, to the real consequences that will be paid on the home front.” If events get out of control, as is likely if there is no diplomatic solution, the effects on the West’s economy will be far more dramatic than any damage that can be inflicted on Russia through sanctions. 

      The US has refused to listen to the arguments not just of Putin, but also of foreign policy wonks such as John Mearsheimer. They believe that even the daydream of linking Ukraine with NATO crosses the reddest of lines, not just for Putin but for Russia itself. Failing to take that into account while insisting that it’s all a question of respecting an independent nation’s right to join a hostile military alliance represents a position that makes war inevitable.

      In a 2021 Geopolitical Monitor article with the title “Do We Live in Mearsheimer’s World?” Mahammad Mammadov cited “Mearsheimerian realism,” which he claims “sees Ukraine’s future as a stable and prosperous state in its being a ‘neutral buffer’ between multiple power poles, akin to Austria’s position during the Cold War. Accordingly, Russia is still a declining power with a one-dimensional economy and need not be contained.”

      That seems like a solution most people in the West could live with… apart from the military-industrial complex, of course. And Democratic presidents seeking to prove they are not weaklings before this year’s midterm elections.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    • 75 Shares169 Views

      in World Politics

      Creating Better Working Conditions in America

      by

      Before the coronavirus pandemic, our capitalist system relied on a generous supply of American workers willing and able to put in full-time hours. But with a declining birth rate, increases in early retirement, millions of women still out of the workforce and the deaths of more than 862,000 people in America — a result of a population ravaged by COVID-19 — the United States needs to get creative to stay operational.

      There are two solutions: attract more immigrants and institutionalize flexible work arrangements, especially for older Americans who aren’t ready or able to leave their jobs.

      Amid the Pandemic, Eating Disorders Are on the Rise

      READ MORE

      Unfortunately, politicians and employers have shown reluctance to embrace these common-sense solutions. Despite promises to make sweeping changes to US immigration policy, President Joe Biden has been unwilling or unable to roll back most of the extreme anti-immigrant policies of the Trump administration. To be fair, in the cases where Biden and his team have tried to make some changes, they have been ordered by Republican-appointed judges to reimpose these policies, as in the case of the “Remain in Mexico” policy.  

      In the workplace, some employers have refused to institute flexible work policies, leading to employee pushback on calls to return to the office. Additionally, last summer, governors in 26 states — all but Louisiana led by Republicans — ended extra unemployment benefits from the American Rescue Plan two to three months earlier than federally required, with some explicitly stating that the unemployed are “lazy” and wanting to collect government benefits. Governor Mike Parson of Missouri said in May 2021 that continuing these unemployment programs “only worsens the workforce issues we’re currently facing. It’s time that we end these programs that have incentivized people to stay out of the workforce.” 

      Embed from Getty Images

      However, with the US averaging around 700,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 each day over the last week, the pandemic is far from over. American families are at their breaking point. Rather than relying on outdated racist and classist ideas about immigration and government support for families, politicians and employers wanting to stimulate the economy should focus on creative solutions to what is clearly an unprecedented crisis.  ]

      Immigrant Workers

      One solution is to build on the existing labor force by welcoming more immigrant workers and providing better benefits for their labor. While immigrants continue to be employed at a higher rate than those who are US-born, they make up just over one-sixth of the total US labor force. Immigrants have been on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic working as essential workers at all levels. But at the same time, many immigrants, particularly Asian, faced increased racism during the early days of the pandemic. 

      Politicians and the American public alike often invoke the idea that we are a “nation of immigrants.” While some might argue that we never have been, immigrants are an important part of American society and deserve better opportunities and benefits available to them.

      Many immigrants in the US are not eligible for unemployment benefits, which makes them more vulnerable. The Migration Policy Institute estimates that at least 6 million immigrants work in industries hardest hit during the pandemic. Additionally, immigrant families have a higher risk of being food insecure. Thus, while immigrants take care of us, we do not return the favor.  

      Flexible Working

      The early retirements of older workers are more likely tied to concerns about health and safety around COVID-19 and an increasing desire for remote work, yet many are not prepared financially for retirement. It would not be surprising if many returned to the workforce, at least part-time, at some point in the coming years. 

      Industries, corporations, foundations and employers would be wise to recruit retirees, even for part-time positions. The older population has a wealth of experience, knowledge and the aptitude to mentor younger workers and immigrants. For example, in one study of retired surgeons, more than half of participants were interested in serving as mentors to new surgeons and most were willing to do so even without compensation. Similarly, for teachers, mentoring is a valuable experience for both retirees and new teachers.  

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      To be sure, attracting immigrant workers by offering competitive salaries and benefits, and meeting workers’ need for flexible work arrangements might require employers to temporarily cut back on profits. However, making these investments in workers would show that employers are forward-thinking and respect their contributions.

      With slowing US population growth, employers will have a smaller pool of potential employees and will therefore need to offer better working conditions to attract workers. Additionally, 2021 saw American workers striking and unionizing with rates not seen in decades, with some attributing this, in part, to pandemic working conditions. In short, employers can create better working conditions by choice or by force.

      Politicians could ease the burden on companies by incentivizing flexible working policies and making it easier for Americans to combine work and family. But — even better — they could ease the burden on workers by providing direct support through paid leave, housing support, universal health care and other programs that would allow for a better quality of life for Americans. These supports would also make part-time work a more realistic option and empower families to make their own decisions about how best to combine work and family at any age.  

      Reimagine Society

      The COVID-19 pandemic has changed us as individuals and as a society. We cannot simply “get back to normal” despite calls from politicians and CEOs to do so. After all, the US alone will likely reach 1 million COVID-19 deaths in the months to come. 

      If politicians and employers want to stay operational, we must take this chance to reimagine our society. This means putting people over profits and creating workplaces that are responsive to the needs of people and their whole selves. 

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More